East Los Angeles

East Los Angeles is an unincorporated area in Los Angeles County, California. East Los Angeles is located immediately east of the Boyle Heights district of Los Angeles, and it is the least diverse of the 272 neighborhods in Los Angeles, with 97.1% of its 125,496 inhabitants (in 2010) being Hispanic. During the 1990s, the neighborhood had an incredibly high crime rate, with prostitutes, gangsters, and drug dealers causing disturbances in the area. The mostly residential district consisted of many small single-story houses, apartments, and housing projects, and it had some popular small-time businesses and zones, having manny Mexican-themed stores. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, East Los Angeles was controlled by the African-American Ballas gang after the Mexican Vagos were forced out, and the neighborhood was taken over by the Grove Street Families in late 1992.